8.22.2012

Here is an experimental method of creating a textured surface on a bulkhead or floor panel:

I found this interesting roller at Wal Mart. It comes in a truck bet liner kit and it's made for apply a truck bed liner that comes in a can. If you happen to have a truck, maybe now's the time to freshen up your truck bed and after the job, you can clean the roller and you use it to create a textured surface on the floor of your bridge deck. I'm sure you can find this type of roller somewhere but you can also find just about anything in a Walmart if you wander around at night in hopes of finding consumer goods that will fill the empty void in your soul.

In addition to adding a non skid surface to the bridge deck, I also wanted to bump up the volume a bit and create a textured, modeled surface that would be extra grippy on the bridge deck and the underside of the boat. I don't [lan on spending too much time clinging to the bottom of an upturned catamaran but should the need arise sometime in the future, I don't want to keep slipping off into the ocean every time a wave smashes of the boat.

to do this, mixed up a batch of quart batch of epoxy and added a cup of cabocil to give it some body. I then masked off the areas and rolled on this slightly thickened mixture. I picked a nice warm day so that I could keep going over the area as the mixture cured. This is how it turned out.

under side of the cat. note the really beefy support webs that give the bridge deck supreme rigidity.

a close up of the exterior cockpit floor

In the next photo that I haven't actually added, what you will not see a coat of epoxy primer. Since I intend to paint this surface and the textured surface would preclude me sanding it to promote adhesion, while the epoxy was simi cured, I "hot coated" it with an epoxy primer,

I also plan on adding what I think will be a novel safety feature: I intend to paint four large rectangles with international epoxy paint and embed aircraft runway reflective glass spheres into the underside of this cat. My logic is that if I a search is ever attempted with a helicopter at night, I'd like to make the job easier.